Garry Kasparov:
It’s a great piece and a damning story, and unfortunately not a
surprising one. I’m sure there are hundreds more like it waiting to
be exposed. But it will have to be the media that does so, because
it’s been clear for a while that little will be done by the EU, the
Obama administration, or the other leading democracies that are
supposedly standing up to Putin over his invasion of Ukraine.
Western politicians and businesses are very eager to write of
Ukraine and avoid any confrontation with Putin to get back to
business as usual. The sanctions as written are very weak to begin
with and this story is further proof that enforcement is a joke that
nobody takes seriously on either side. As with the Minsk “peace
agreements” that Putin totally ignored, these sanctions are charades
to let Western politicians look busy and shield themselves from
criticism.
Western companies violating or sneaking around sanctions is just a
new twist on the endemic corruption that has become the leading
export of Putin’s Russia. This is what happens when the free world
thinks economic engagement will liberalize and reform autocracies
and kleptocracies. Instead, the flow goes the other way and the
corruption spreads. You don’t engage with a virus; you quarantine
the carriers to save the healthy! Putin and his fellow despots from
Kazakhstan to Iran to Venezuela learned long ago that their dirty
money always finds willing partners in the free world. This will
continue to be the case unless there are serious consequences for
doing business with a dictatorship. Cisco and anyone else should
face a serious criminal investigation and charges for breaking
sanctions and possibly arming the Russian terrorist forces in
Ukraine. But as we have seen over the past year, the West has little
appetite for confronting Putin or its own business community even
though the long-term consequences of continued instability in
Europe due to Putin’s aggression will be far more costly in the long
run.

 The case also shows how much leverage the free world has if it
only has the courage to use it. Russian companies are desperate for
this equipment, just as they are desperate to sell Russian resources,
and they need access to the free world’s markets far more than the
world needs Russian goods and resources, even its oil and gas. And
yet to listen to the news you would think Russia had all the
advantages in this fight. It’s ridiculous and shows how Putin can
win again and again despite having lousy cards because his
opponents keep folding.
Cisco obviously doesn’t think the Obama admin has any intention
of enforcing these sanctions. Why would they when the Pentagon
itself is asking to buy Russian rocket engines? Putin, Assad,
Khamenei, and all the other despots are hurrying to get away with
as much as they can while the world’s policeman is asleep in a
doughnut shop. The bad guys look at the calendar, “Only 600 more
days of Obama, hurry up!” Stories like Cisco give confidence to
Putin and his cronies that the sanctions are pro-forma, just another
case of Obama being all bark and no bite, or acting only
superficially.
There are always consequences of inaction and weakness. Right
now they are in Crimea, in Eastern Ukraine, in Syria, in Ramadi.
But they won’t stop there. The US benefits more than any other
nation from globalization and its broad security presence helps
make it possible. If that American security umbrella continues to
close up, multinational companies like Cisco will suffer badly. If
Cisco isn’t investigated, if this behavior goes ignored and
unpunished by the authorities, it’s a clear sign to others they can do
the same, and they will if they aren’t already. It’s also a signal to
Putin that his war in Ukraine is no big deal to the free world, which
will encourage him to press on there and, soon enough, elsewhere.